How can I grow my aftermarket sales?

November 2009

"Our sales reps love to sell big-ticket systems, but they have zero interest in pushing lower-priced add-ons. Since this is where we earn our best margins, I'd love to create an incentive plan that would make this line of business grow. Ideas?"

Mike: You have several options. One solution is simply to increase the commission on the add-ons (and perhaps lower the percentage for big-ticket deals). Or you could begin to pay commissions based on margins rather than gross revenues. Either way, selling add-ons could become somewhat more attractive to your sales reps.

However, neither of these approaches will work if your sales reps feel that small transactions involve too much hassle and paperwork--which is often the real problem.

You need to sit down with your sales team and discuss how you've structured their incentive plan. You have a real balancing act here: Your reps probably feel they're getting paid a reasonable amount of money for pushing big-ticket sales, so they won't be happy to do more work for no extra pay.